Then glancing over them one by one as they stood about him, his eye fixed itself first upon a foreign representative whose breast was covered with decorations, and he said—
"Baron, did you not say in the Salon of a certain Princess that out of your Secret Service money you were providing arms for the Egyptian populace?"
The Baron gave a start of surprise, made some movement of the lips as if trying to reply, and sank back to his seat. Then the Consul-General turned to one of two Egyptian Ministers who, with faces as red as their tarbooshes, were standing side by side, and said—
"Pasha, will you deny that as recently as yesterday you sent somebody to me in secret to say that while you were innocent of conspiracy against British rule, your colleague, who stands at your right, was deeply guilty?"
The Pasha stammered out some confused words and collapsed.
Then the Consul-General faced down to one of the Ulema, the Grand Mufti, who, in his white turban and graceful robes, was trying his best to smile, and said—
"Your Eminence, can it be possible that you were not present at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar when a letter was sent to a certain visionary mummer then in the Soudan, asking him to return to Cairo in order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army?"
The smile passed in a flash from the Grand Mufti's face, and he, too, dropped back to his seat. Then one by one the others who had been standing, slithered down to their places, as if each of them was in fear that some secret he had whispered in the salon, the harem or the mosque, would in like manner be blurted from the housetops.
The Consul-General swept the whole company with a look of triumph and said—
"You see, gentlemen, I know everything, and it is useless to deny. In order to overthrow the authority of England in Egypt you have condescended to the arts of anarchists—you have joined together to provoke rebellion against law and order."